Scotland, Day 2

3 Admissions to the William Wallace Monument: $40. A dinner for 3 at Burger King: $25. Almost getting killed on the Scottish Motorway: Priceless.

Ok, so this day started out far too early for me. We were in our hotel room, preparing to get on our flight to Scotland. Having not slept much the night before, I was weary and ready to go get on the flight so I could go to sleep. We left our hotel room at noon. I was expecting a couple of hours – thanks to the Patriot Act – and then fly out. I was sorely mistaken. Security took us ten minutes to get through, BUT we still had 3.5 hours to wait until our flight. Beautiful planning.

The Portland Airport is a fascinating place, full of many restaurants that peddle their overpriced wares. Having only eaten a cinnamon roll for breakfast, by 1:30 pm, I was hungry enough to eat my own face. I wound up eating an Italian Sausage with onions and sauerkraut. Tasty, but not that filling. The fries were a much better value. The meal cost $10. Had I done it at home, it would have cost $1.50, tops.

The airplane trip was...unique. It lasted ten hours, but we had little video screens wherein we could watch about 1 dozen movies, should we so choose. A neat idea, but one that got old fast as my butt started hurting and the food from the airplane maintained its reputation for being disgusting.

As we began to land in Amsterdam, I was struck with one of those brilliant revelations that only comes from the truly sleep-deprived: Amsterdam (and Europe in general) looks exactly like the U.S. (from the air, at least).

After landing, we began another glorious 2-hour wait for our flight. This flight was, perhaps, the most disturbing and irritating experience of my entire life.

When the boarding call came, instead of going onto the plane, we were ushered onto some buses and were driven to our plane. This plane was known as a “City-Hopper,” and was, quite possibly, the dirtiest, most hazardous plane I have ever ridden in. As we were on the tarmac, the electricity shorted out, all the lights went dead, and the pilot had to reassure us that everything was fine; we’d just be delayed a bit longer. At this point, my fear-factor spiked sharply. The waiting for takeoff was nothing compared to the actual flight.

I believe that there is no creature more hated among man than the parent of crying, whining, screaming children. The parents in question were in possession of two such children; children that were most likely possessed by demons. I shall refer to them as Azazel (younger) and Mephistopheles (older) from here on out. Azazel was a little baby of 1.5-2 years of age and insisted in screaming at EVERYTHING. Now, this isn’t the persistent scream of a baby in pain. No, this is, in fact, the gnawing scream of a child that is bored and hates his parents and every other thing in creation. By the time the plane landed, all fifty passengers, three stewardesses, and the pilots of the plane wanted to brutally murder the parents and then travel back up to 30,000 feet and drop the children out the airlock.

Therefore, we landed in the Glasgow Airport in Scotland. Our car is a Ford (go figure) with excellent gas mileage, and a terrifying feature: the wheel is on the right side of the car. Yes, we’ve all heard that the Brits travel on the Left (wrong) side of the road, but you never know the terror and confusion until you experience it first hand.

Not only does Britain have the audacity to violate the travel norms by staying on the left-hand side of the road, but they exhibit their truly sadistic nature by creating “round-abouts,” which are supposed to take the place of intersections and stop lights. I’d try to explain them to you, but…well...Their kinda a circle in which everyone travels and then gets off on the road they want to. You can yield to cars coming your way (but you apparently don’t have to). It is Hell.

Our tourist goal for the day was to see the William Wallace Memorial. After deciphering the illegible road maps and traversing the demonic round-abouts, we arrived at the Memorial. To put it succinctly: big castle, big sword, big man. When you ascend all 254 steps (if you have weak knees, I’d advise against it), you can gaze out over all of Scotland and see the beauty of Stirling and the areas beyond. It is a sight well worth seeing. We bought two cans of Iron Brew to commemorate the event (Iron Brew – often spelled “Irn Bru” – is a bubble-gum flavored soda with a hint of iron flavor. It’s like drinking a clown’s blood. Delicious.)

We left so that we could find our hotel. If you have been keeping track, we have not eaten since dinner on the plane the night before (unless you count the Iron Brew). After three hours of travelling in this cesspool of torment known as the Scottish motorway, we finally find our hotel. It is a lovely little Holiday Inn Express with a television (12 inches across), a bed (lumpy) and a fold-away couch (probably created by those sadists at IKEA). After convincing Dad that Mother and I were starving and did not want to eat the MREs that he had packed (yuck), we went to…Burger King. The meal cost $25 (12 pounds) and they botched our order. We started laughing so hard (because we were all exhausted) that we didn’t even notice how terrible the food tasted (although, to be fair to Scotland, the food probably didn’t taste any worse than Burger King food usually does).

So ended Day Two.